Marriage Equality On The Big Stage

Tuesday night in Charlotte, the Democratic Party’s newfound bullishness on marriage equality was championed by speaker after speaker, while last week’s GOP headliners tended to downplay their position:

“As president, I will protect the sanctity of life,” [Romney said in his convention speech]. “I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America’s first liberty: the freedom of religion.” The remarks capped three nights of prime-time convention speeches in which top Romney surrogates subtly acknowledged the marriage equality issue in somewhat coded language. Vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan called Romney a “defender of marriage” in his speech Wednesday, while Ann Romney had said, “What Mitt and I have is a real marriage.” Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was more explicit at the podium, calling President Obama a “self-professed evangelical” who “supports changing the definition of marriage.”

So far the anti-marriage equality attack ads have been limited to small outside spending groups. Here is a billboard the Republican Union PAC is using to target Catholic voters in five battleground states:

And here is a TV ad running in North Carolina this week from the Campaign for American Values, a small evangelical-run Super PAC which supports Romney:

But notice the difference between that ad and this one supporting the marriage equality push in Minnesota (bad actors vs. real people, production values, etc):

The Democrats might not be making big ads attacking Republicans for opposing marriage equality yet, but this is yet more evidence of a dramatically changing landscape, and enthusiasm gap, from even a year ago.